Weekly Update #168: Dinovember

October has ended and Halloween sadly lies past us now. It’s one of my favorite times of the year, so I’m definitely going to miss it. However, one good thing about the end of October is the beginning of November, also known to some as… Dinovember.

Whereas others spend the month drawing dinosaurs or taking pictures of dino toys doing weird things, we’re going to focus 100% on GENBA no Kizuna. Jurassic June was the month we picked to first unveil this project and for Dinovember, we’re planning to release the first, short demo. It will only contain the prologue and possibly the first investigation segment, but I’ll go into more detail about the contents later this month, once we’ve made a little more progress.

There’s still a lot to do, but I definitely want to have a little demo ready by the end of the month. Outside of giving you a quick and early glimpse of the game, its main purpose will be for us to try out a few new things, see what my script will look like in a programmed state, and to hopefully get some early feedback from players.

Right now, I’m busy with Nobuhiko’s sprite variations of which there will only be four throughout the prologue. Keiichi will have a couple more, but I’m not too sure about the exact number yet. Hopefully, I will have all the sprites done by next weekend, though.

Other things that still need to be done are the sound effects and music (which I’ll actually have something to say about soon!), the first background also still needs to be shaded and I need to take care of the notebook entry illustrations. Other than that, there isn’t too much else. All the menu stuff has been done some time ago, so… it certainly seems doable to complete the demo this month.

In any case, you can definitely look forward to some more GENBA details soon as well as first actual in-game screenshots!

Now, to wrap today’s posting up, I’d like to once again direct some attention towards our Patreon. I will most likely update the goals there very soon, since the hosting costs for our website have been covered and paid now (once again, thank you very much to everyone who’s supporting us!). And I might have some new, more specific numbers in regards to the cost of GENBA’s soundtrack. So yeah… we can really use the additional support now.

If you’re curious, right now, you can read another new blog post there, which I’ve posted on Halloween. It features some unreleased (and somewhat gory) art from SHINRAI and quite a few words in regards to visual clues. The polls for the Christmas and New Year’s artworks will also be up very soon, so you’ll be able to help us decide which of our characters will be featured on those. And don’t forget, you can get some early looks at two new GENBA characters as well as the first background, too!

I will also post some early glimpses of the script very soon, so if you’re a patron, please look forward to that!

With that said, time for me to get back to work, so… please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3